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What are some FOSS programs that you think are a far better user experience than their counterparts? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) by to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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I used Plex for my home media for almost a year, then it stopped playing nice for reasons I gave up on diagnosing. While looking at alternatives, I found Jellyfin which is much more responsive, IMO, and the UI is much nicer as well.

It gets relegated to playing Fraggle Rock and Bluey on repeat for my kiddo these days, but I am absolutely in love with the software.

What are some other FOSS gems that are a better experience UX/UI-wise than their proprietary counterparts?

EDIT: Autocorrect turned something into "smaller" instead of what I meant it to be when I wrote this post, and I can't remember what I meant for it to say so it got axed instead.

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[–] 50 points 3 years ago* (20 children)

Desktop: Zotero, RStudio, Thunderbird, Sumatra PDF, Notepad++, NoMacs (image viewer), Espanso (text expander), qBittorrent, Inkscape

Android: FairEmail or K9 Mail, Authenticator Pro, Feeder, F-Droid, Pocket Casts, SD Maid

Multi-platform: Home Assistant, Wireguard, Syncthing, Jellyfin, Kodi, Samba, Firefox

Honorable mentions that don't have the best UX but are still hugely appreciated for existing: Joplin, QGIS

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    +1 for Sumatra. Use that and a thumbnail loader, and it's superior to Calibre for a library of books (ePub, PDF, CBR, CBZ).

    I also use Notepad++ and qBittorrent. Looking into Inkscape now. Firefox is the best.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    I love Zotero so much. It's way better than Mendeley

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    Agreed. I made the switch after Mendeley pushed their online manager with only a new limited desktop client, which was awful. Couldn't believe I hadn't gone with Zotero in the first place. Originally only used for my thesis, now I use for work and personal interests as well.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Thunderbird

    I actually came to this thread in hopes of finding a replacement for Thunderbird. I've been using it for 10 years or more now, on various machines, always hoping it would somewhen stop being laggy. No plugins installed, and it frequently freezes for several seconds or even minutes, when I'm idle but also while I'm typing.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Hm.. I've never seen it do that to me (on Windows with multi GB mail storage).

    Though I think there is a setting to auto compress the mail storage every so often if it will save more than X, though I can't remember the details on top of my head. If that setting is too low (e.g. if it will save more than 1mb) then it might be running very often for minimal gain.

    Perhaps rummage around in there and see if it helps.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    I appreciated the advice! Found the setting, which was indeed low. Raised it to 200 MB and to require manual confirmation. Today I was asked if I want to compress. The sad part is, the freezes continued in between. So this was not the cause, but thank you still.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Sorry that didn't work. Maybe also try this:

    Privacy & Security --> Security --> Scam Detection

    Turn off the "Tell me if the message I'm reading is a suspected email Scam"

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    I absolutely love Espanso. So much faster than TextExpander and I like that it's config is plain text files.

    You're insane though if you think Inkscape is better than Illustrator. I'm not an Adobe fanboy by any means, but it is a really good (if bloated) product.

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